Love And Great Buildings

Somewhere in the northern reaches of the Glass Desert, an old man was dying.

A few months ago, that wouldn’t have been noteworthy. Dying was simply what old men did, the same way merchants hoarded gold or falcons flew south to escape the winter. But now? Now things had changed. Now, this was something to behold. Coins had turned to mere metal, each a painstakingly forged and elaborately decorated trinket worth absolutely nothing. Now, you’d never see a falcon cross the steam-white sky, and there were no more winters for them to flee. Now, of course, there were no more old men.

There followed a long and wheezing cough, the horrible sound ringing out over the hillocks only to be lost in the warm and windless air. In these moments, Merred missed the moon more than anything else – his eyes had turned weak with age, so weak they could no longer pick out the individual stars. Once upon a time he could have named each of the hundred constellations, the witch and the hunter and the stag and the stormcloud. But now they’d all blurred into a grey smudge, a vague impression of the sky with none of its depth or beauty. The moon had stayed with him for so long, its majesty piercing through the haze even as the stars all faded into it. And now it was gone – stolen along with everything else in this world worth living for.

The other reason he missed the moon, Merred reflected bitterly as he stumbled forward and glass crunched beneath his boots, was unfortunately far less poetic. The stars still shone above him, but their pitiful glimmers could never provide him enough light to make out the trail, the one he’d been following since well before sunset. The shards here were cast in two, maybe three shades of grey, a world away from the kaleidoscope that had surrounded him in the daytime – and somewhere amidst it all he knew there was blue and turquoise, arranged into big and clumsy arrowheads. Water this way, in the nascent language of the survivors. The loftiest and least reliable promise you could possibly make in this wasteland. Merred had lost count of the times he’d followed one of these treasure hunts to its dreary end, only to find himself unable to identify where a stream or spring might once have existed.

Still, at least people were trying to help, or at least he wanted to believe they were. Truthfully, it was just as likely that someone out there was laying these out with no end in mind at all, perhaps some desperate attempt to conjure a wellspring ahead just by believing it was there. Survivors latched onto those little absurdities – they prayed to gods who had already been annihilated, or spoke of places like The Refuge, a hidden castle that had miraculously survived the storms and to this day lay stocked with food, containing wells that pierced hitherto-unknown rivers far underground. People needed hope no matter how deluded, and he wasn’t innocent there either; he had certainly indulged in the daydreams of cresting the next hill to find the Refuge there and waiting, a majestic structure of black stone against the surrounding colour.

There was also, of course, the other possibility – the unpleasant one, but unfortunately also the likeliest. Someone could be laying these out on purpose, in full sanity and full knowledge that they would mislead and even kill. A cruel and wicked game, but maybe the only one there was left to play. Profoundly heartless, yes – but then, these were the same people who stood by and let it all happen.

At that thought Merred tried to spit, and the flaming soreness that assailed his parched throat reminded him instantly that he was in no position to do such a thing. No one had listened. He'd spent years translating those tablets, and years more thinking through the most convincing way to present them to the Emperor. He’d shared his people’s holy texts, the ancient prophecies that told of mankind dragging the world into greed and hatred, of the great evil that would beset them if they let that future come to pass. He’d drawn connections, made explicit the links between the early lines and events that had already happened, then its ending and what was to come. And when they didn’t listen he’d tried again, taken to Hallori’s streets only to practically be laughed out of town. It seemed they just… didn’t care, or at least they thought they didn’t until it was too late. Until it came down from the sky and fire raged for weeks and weeks, until the rivers boiled away and deserts turned to glass. Try as he might, even in these final moments of his life, Merred could not suppress his hatred.

It wasn’t dying that bothered him. It was thinking about all those wasted years, the blood and sweat and sleepless nights, and he’d done it all for a world that didn’t want to be saved in the end. He'd believed in an afterlife once, a small patch of sky where men’s spirits would go and be free of all these worldly burdens – but now? If it had ever existed, Merred hoped the fire had taken it too. He didn’t want it, and the rest of them didn’t deserve it.

The old man’s thoughts were cut short as a new sight emerged before him. By now the world had grown even hazier, earth and sky congealed into a shapeless black thing that stretched out in every direction at once – but through it Merred could see movement, a pale light flickering and dancing on the horizon. It was impossible – the moon was gone, torn apart by the stranger, caught in the burning path it had cleaved across the sky. Yet here it was, rising for one last time. Returning to see him off.

As oblivion came to take him, Merred heard a voice.

“It’s okay. I’m here. Don’t die. It’s okay. I’m here. Don’t die.” Khanate repeated the words like a prayer or mantra as she worked, pressing her waterskin to the old man’s lips to force down his throat what few drops remained inside. Her lantern lay discarded close by, and in its light she could make out the stranger’s features: He was not quite as aged as she’d thought, though his hair had greyed and his face turned gaunt beyond its years. Early fifties perhaps, and clad in breezy but unadorned black robes, the kind you needed to survive the midday heat. If he woke up – when, Khanate reminded herself, when he woke up, she could offer him some baubles, those little beads of glass she’d sewn into her outfit. He’d like that.

So Khanate stayed with the man, guiding his head onto her bedroll and steeling herself for the journey ahead, back home then back here with more supplies in tow. She built a cairn out of the larger glass chunks along with what few rocks she found, no great monument but hopefully enough to guide her here when the time came. In older times this would’ve been a night for a fire, like the ones she’d build with Sophii in that little woodland by the house. A smile passed her lips as she remembered the cold night air, the dancing sparks and her sister’s shining green eyes – but then she thought of what that place must look like now, and the joy withered. Then she remembered that last night with her sister, and it was as if someone had cut it from her heart with a scalpel.

Hours later, when the sky had begun to turn white but the cruel sun not yet risen, the old man opened his eyes.

A rumbling cough was the first sound Khanate heard from him that night aside from his shallow, struggling breaths. After so long crossing this barren land a deep melancholy had settled within her, so the shock of seeing living, human eyes took a moment to recover from. The stranger wasn't well - the skin of his face had sagged and drained of colour, and the rest of his body bore telltale signs of malnourishment - but he might be. For this first time, she really felt he might be.

"Who are you?" The man's voice was a pained croak, and clearly the effort of getting words out was taking a toll. Khanate held up a hand to silence him; "Let yourself rest for now. You need food and water, and I know where to find some. But it's a long way - can you hold on until I get back?"

The old man nodded, her invitation to silence readily accepted. "You should move over there," she added gingerly, indicating a small outcrop of rocks nearby. The sun was already on the horizon, and with its rise the shards and rocks underfoot would heat up like coals in a hearth. And that feeling, of feet scorched even through the thick soles of leather moccasins, had become more emblematic of this new era than anything else. A constant reminder of the nightmarish firestorm that lasted more than a week. An echo of the end of the world.

A tear rolled down Khanate's cheek. What she wouldn't give for a cool autumn breeze, the thrill of running face first into a winter snowstorm. The shade of a little cedar.

The old man seemed to have fallen asleep again, having dragged himself to the spot she'd indicated. It wasn't a perfect shelter, wouldn't protect him from the worst of the midday furnace - but what would? It was the best she could do at the moment, and she'd just have to pray he'd be alright until she returned. She could nurse him back to health, she was sure of it - but he'd have to get through this first.

Khanate spoke as she turned, and whether her words were heard by the stranger or only the big empty sky, she did not know. "Be safe, friend. You've managed this long - what's half a day more?” Her voice turned to a whisper. “Please don’t die while I’m gone.”

With no wind to carry them away, the wanderer's words lingered. Until - after enough worried looks back and bleak thoughts of the futility in even trying - Khanate crested a hill and laid eyes on the old man for what she hoped would not be the last time.

The road home was long and quiet, and by the time Khanate had reached the foothills the sun blazed above her unceasingly. This had once been a city, or at least according to Sophii and the maps she obsessively charted it had. A smaller settlement, but one well-known for its place near the capital and loved for its beautiful cliffsides and trees. There had been homesteads too, carved into those stone faces that rose high into the sky. Those were gone now – not just the caverns but the clifftops as well, levelled as the sky caved in and took them with it. Now all that remained was this sequence of waist-high mounds, that for months had been an uncrossable field of magma before finally cooling into misshapen stone. Her stomach always twisted here, on the threshold between the Glass Desert’s prismatic colours and this monolith of lifeless grey.

As she came near to the gully in the centre of this mile-wild field of rock, Khanate stopped dead in her tracks. Voices ahead, angry shouts and growled commands in a voice she didn’t recognise. The wanderer kept herself low to the ground, peered out from behind an outcrop at the strangers – three in total, clad in robes of unadorned white, and what little skin she could see from here was red and blistered. In their hands were spears, their gruesome hafts constructed from sun-bleached bone, and points from cruelly sharpened stone – and presently, all three were in motion, feverishly prying into and smashing at the great stone gateway of the keep.

It could hardly be called a castle, not compared to the ones that existed before – but here it stood like a tower, three times taller than the raiders beneath. Its blackened bricks stood at three arm-spans wide even now, after the burning wind had hewn them to half their original size. Most of the fortress had been taken by the storm, but a few of the inner rooms had stayed intact – enough to shelter a small group, and apparently enough to give this place a legendary status in the wasteland as perhaps its only surviving artifact. O Refuge, if only you had stayed our secret.

To her dismay, the men were making progress. They’d worked out that the walls were impenetrable, and now they were digging at the doorway’s edges, prying it open using their hafts as levers. Khanate’s breath caught as one nearly succeeded, the gateway beginning to budge before the strain became too much and he was forced to pull his weapon away or risk it snapping. The woman reached into her pack with a shaking hand, grasped around till it made contact with the familiar shape – a curved mahogany bow, and she was certain none like it had survived the blaze. Staggering care and elegance had gone into its creation, and it hurt her to use such a beautiful thing to kill. She found herself again wishing that someday there could be peace again, peace like she’d had in that mountain village as a child. But she’d tried that already. In the early days she and Sophii had travelled unarmed and defenceless, shared what little they found with the strangers they met as they wandered. Until the inevitable day when they trusted the wrong person, and her sleep had been shattered by-

The screams still rang in her ears as she drew the bow. No, there could be no peace here.

With the snap of a drawstring Khanate’s first arrow sailed through the air, thudding into the neck of the man stood by the door. A crack as the unexpected force broke his spear in two amd his compatriots yelped in panic. Before they could react Khanate was out of sight, nocking another arrow as she sheltered behind the rocks. Footsteps were fast approaching, and the woman cursed as she realised what they were doing – splitting up, coming at her from two angles. No way to shoot one without exposing her back to the other.

So with no other choice Khanate sprang up, frantically adjusted her hands to aim at the man on her left. Her fingers ached, a painful contortion to both tighten the bowstring and hold her next arrow – she could loose the first, then maybe if she was quick enough-

She was not.

The arrow struck true, punching into the raiders chest and splattering his white robes with red before he could draw close. But as she twisted to face the last she was struck, something sharp and heavy that set her shoulder aflame and sent her tumbling. He’d reached her now, but rather than her his eyes seemed to scan the ground nearby, searching for-

His spear! He’d thrown his spear- without a moment to spare she lashed out, vision white with pain as her injured shoulder came into contact with the weapon, thrust it as far out of his reach as she could. The ground below her was slick, and it took a moment to register that this was her own blood, sputtering from the wound as rain might have once from a cloud. The man was saying something, words spat and laced with venom, but Khanate didn’t understand. A weak gurgle was the only response she could muster.

The man didn’t even go for the spear, having seemingly made the decision that his bare hands would be enough for this. He was probably right. So as he knelt down beside her, positioned to clasp her throat, Khanate once more found herself with just one choice: Prepare for oblivion.

This can’t be it. I made a promise.

The spare arrow was still clasped in her hand, and as the man reached down she flung herself at him, charged like a wild animal. She cried out again as she drove the weapon into his side, struggled through the agony of her broken shoulder straining to complete the task. But it worked, and before the raider could recover from the shock she’d pulled the arrowhead free and buried it in his eye, and the man fell onto his back as life drained from him.

Everything was red.

Khanate lay still for a while, the adrenaline fading and giving way to a strong urge to lay her head down and rest. Then she realised and fought against it with alarm – she was bleeding out, that part wasn’t over, and if she fell asleep here she’d probably never wake up. So battling her own fatigue, the woman made her way to the keep’s hidden entrance, a cavern obscured with rubble until it looked no different from the surrounding landscape. She’d have to crawl to get in, to reach what little food and water and healing salve remained, but it was the only way. The great stone door looked like an entrance – in truth it was anything but. She’d made sure of that.

The interior was cramped, consisting of two stuffy and windowless rooms plus a narrow hallway between them. Bitterly she wondered what the raiders must have expected, some grandstanding palace where the air was cool and fresh, the water ran endless and all their needs would be met. So they’d intruded, and for their efforts they were met with a fight and gruesome murder. Killing always left her feeling utterly filthy – because what were they if not people just like her, trying to survive in a hostile world? Would she not try to raid a place like this if she happened upon it, out of misguided hope if nothing else? They couldn’t have known what this place was, what it meant to her – what right did she have to condemn them to death?

No. She’d tried compassion, too many times. There was no place for it here.

As she sat in the storeroom bandaging up the wound and forcing down what few non-rancid bits of vulture meat she found here, Khanate found her thoughts once more turning to the old man. She wasn’t sure why her urge to help him was so desperate, why that sliver of compassion seemed to return now after deserting her for so long. Could she even make the journey back now, injured as she was? He’d said but three words in all the time she’d spent at his side – was she really readying herself to risk life and limb for his sake? And all for a vague hope he might still breathe by the time she returned?

Her steps heavy and slow, Khanate walked down the corridor and opened the door at the end.

The mosaic alone was enough to bring the woman to tears, to flood her heart with all the emotions she’d been suppressing since last night. Even in its complete form it had been clumsy, imperfect in the way only the most beautiful art is. But even with the haphazard jigsaw’s middle missing, Khanate could make out mountains and homes, a bright blue sky above and deep green fields below. The piece’s name was inscribed below, on what she had turned into the lid of Sophii’s coffin:

LOVE AND GREAT BUILDINGS WILL SURVIVE

For a time, Khanate simply sat and cried. She missed Sophii more and more every day, but a small part of her was glad she wasn’t around to see this, to see how far the world had fallen in her absence. Love had not survived, and neither had the great buildings she brought to life in her artistry; she was the one who insisted on leaving it outside on the hillocks, so that people will see it and, just for a moment, remember how things used to be. I hope it makes them smile. Last week, someone had smashed it.

Khanate stayed silent for the rest of her stay, sobbing quietly with no words to say to Sophii’s spirit. Eventually – minutes or hours, she could not say – she collected herself. A half-full waterskin, a few extra morsels in her pack, and new arrows to replace the ones she’d lost. “Don’t die,” she said as she walked out from the keep and across the scorched desert landscape. As if the old man could hear. “Don’t you dare die. You’re all I have left.”

By now, the only feeling that mattered to Merred was thirst.

To begin with he'd felt a lot of things, and with nothing else to do but watch the sky brighten as the sun began its lazy arc across the sky he'd resorted to naming and numbering them all. First there'd been hope, his earlier bitterness fallen away in the face of simple human survival instinct. Then came the sensations - his shelter-stone burning against the small of his back, even through the layers of protective leather. A fiery pain as scavenging carrion flies - the only life that seemed to have thrived in this new reality - landed on his hands and burrowed, biting at his skin until it was a cracked and bloody mess. Within seconds he felt himself weakening even further, and then he had not even the strength to pull them off. Then that, too, stopped mattering - he didn't have water, and he couldn't move.

There had been so much hope in the woman's eyes. He'd heard a desperate plea in the way she spoke, as if forestalling an old man's demise was the most important thing in the world, as if his survival meant more to her than even to him. It would've been kinder to call after her, stop her from embarking on this fool's errand. He'd let her make an impossible vow, promise a kindness she could never deliver - but if nothing else, that seemed the perfect end to this sordid sixty-year story.

As Merred saw her figure on the hillside below something ok Ng inside him snapped, and despite the burning in his throat he cackled, a hoarse and tortured sound that hacked at the midday air. This time she was not the moon, carried no facsimile of otherworldly grace; she was a limp and staggering thing, and as she drew close Merred saw glazed and sullen eyes beneath her adorned hood. A shoulder had been torn from her cloak, and below it he could see a fresh and clumsily tied tourniquet, though blood had at some point seeped from it and crusted over, like a grotesque second skin. The woman groaned in pain and fell to her knees as she reached his side, then a bleak horror filled her eyes as she looked upon him. The flies had burrowed into his hands and face, their venom by now surely closing in on his heart. "No," she gasped. "No no no. There must be a way. I must have- herbs- there must be something-"

With a pained, half-mad laugh, Merred cut her off. "Oh, my poor girl. You should've left me to them. You should never have come back here at all."

The next stretch of time was silent, save for the old man's croaks of pain as Khanate pulled twenty-odd insects out of him. Carrion flies were hellish creatures, and in any other time Khanate imagined she'd feel a twinge of satisfaction as she crushed their blood-gorged, golden-brown bodies. But she had no way to stall their venom, and in the face of this failure she felt hollow. Her breaths came out as desolate as the barren landscape around them.

His face was a sickly grey now, and the effort to drink from her waterskin seemed nearly insurmountable. Once he'd finished, the woman said in the gentlest voice she could muster: "My name is Khanate. I'd be honoured if I could have yours - if speaking isn't too hard right now."

"Merred." He spat the name like he was discarding it, his voice flat and lifeless. "I don't know why you came back, but I'm thankful for the kindness. I'm sorry it had to end like this. There's nothing more you can do."

"There is one thing," she replied, fighting against the rising anguish in her chest. "If you want to - if you can - I would like to know your story. I would carry it forward with me, the memory of who you once were and are now."

Merred scowled, his voice hoarse but seeming at least to be returning. "Knowing that will do you no good. It's a foul tale, and the only gift it has to offer you is rot. It's how a world of hope and promise boiled away and revealed what had always lain beneath. You don't need to hear it."

"Please."

A sigh. "Fine. Sixty years ago there was a desert called Saiar, and it was nothing like this one. Golden sands, blue oases..." The old man's eyes had become clouded now, a melancholic nostalgia flaring as he described his homeland. Khanate felt another pang for the mountains - she could tell Merred about them, but he'd never truly know their beauty, understand how they towered over the trees and houses in that valley.

"We called ourselves the Fall," Merred continued, "because we believed that the world was made from fallen starlight. We told the future by reading constellations, and centuries ago one of our priests read that someday we'd forget the stars, abandon our unity as creatures of the sky and fall to greed and hatred. He told us we'd turn on eachother, become war-men squabbling over things that had never mattered before, and that we'd drag down the stars themselves in our wake, make them as bitter and vengeful as we were. That they'd descend with fire and fury to punish our neglect."

"As you might imagine, it became my people's sole mission to stop all that from coming to pass. We'd send out missionaries to nearby tribes, tell them of our discovery and try to divert them from the path we knew we were all on. When my time came, I set my sights higher - I'd heard of great empires to the south, Irina and Bells and all the rest. I thought to travel there, to show them our writings and prove that this was all imminent, that if they didn't stop fighting-"

His fit of coughs made Khanate jump. She'd been listening so intently she'd almost forgotten that Merred was taking his last breaths as he narrated. "I worry," she said softly as he took another drink, "that by the time you reached us, we were too far gone."

Merred laughed mirthfully. "Too far gone indeed. I think I convinced a couple of you. I landed a meeting or two with the higher-ups, even an advisor to the Emperor at some point. Bastard practically laughed me out of the capital all on his own. I tried everything. Twenty eight years I wasted. Translated our writings into every language I could, even taught a few people to read the fucking things themselves for proof. And it didn't make a lick of difference."

Khanate reeled back as the man let out a shriek, an animal sound full of hatred and fury unlike anything else she'd heard from him, followed by another hacking cough. He looked up wretchedly. "Twenty eight years, stranger. I could've had my own life. I could've found love, made a family." His eyes were like daggers now, stabbing into her with accusations and venom. "I could've done what the rest of you did."

The old man slumped then, quietly keening for a time with what little voice he had left before he continued. "So that's the tale. And now that I've done you your favour, you can give me something back. You know what it is, and don't keep me waiting." He spat. "Nothing left for me here."

There was so much Khanate wanted to say. She wanted to give him her own story, or at least thank him for all he'd sacrifice, or lament the lost kindness that had once graced his soul. But her throat burned like ash, and in any case he wouldn't want to hear it. So with vision blurring at the edges as sickness rose inside her, Khanate drew her bow.

The walk back was the loneliest she had ever taken, and as Khanate wended across the featureless landscape she cursed herself. Merred had been right - his story was a scar that might never heal, and she'd been a fool to ask for it. Thanks to her, he'd spent his last moments dragging himself through a past he wanted to leave behind, and she'd stained her hands with yet more innocent blood. Before she'd had something to look back on fondly, to cherish even if it might never return - but it was a lie. The world had always been this joyless and evil, even if it had taken her until now to realise it. Love and Great Buildings Will Survive. Love had been in its death-throes from the moment she was born, and it had taken until now to wither away entirely.

At sundown Khanate at last reached the refuge, and as her foot brushed against one of the midday corpses she let out an involuntary cry. He'd had a story just like Merred, with triumphs and failures and loves. And like a careless child she'd broken it to pieces, scattered it to the wind so it could never be retrieved or reassembled. Three lifetimes, three creatures born of the same Light as her, snuffed without a second thought.

Khanate stood by the Refuge for a time, not yet ready to face what lay within. The first raider had fallen close to here, and the vultures and carrion wasps had already stolen away with bits of his flesh. The shape of a grinning skull was just visible underneath, and as her gaze fell upon it Khanate pitched forward and threw up, the acrid taste almost welcome after a day of feeling detached from this world like a ghost. Just one more thing I took apart.

Weeks passed before she could bear the thought of sitting with Sophii again, of standing face to face with yet another victim of this savage world. The man they'd trusted, who'd taken her sister away - was she any different to him now? A bringer of death, marauding over the last remnants of this place?

The lantern in the crypt had sputtered out, and when Khanate relit it the mosaic atop the coffin seemed strange, as if new fractures had formed since she last had lain eyes on it. She thought now not just of Sophii, but of the old man who had not wanted to be buried, the lifetime he'd spent fighting for love. He'd longed for a better world, and because of people like her, he'd failed utterly.

Khanate reached for the glass jigsaw, and tenderly moved a piece.

Reassembling the thing took time, and she must have spent full days in the candlelight, puzzling out the connections and pushing shards into place. Sophii had balanced the things with unhuman intricacy, and Khanate knew it would never again look the way it originally had. But in these years she had done only evil, wrought death and ruin to protect the grave of her beloved sister. It was time now for an act of good, however small - not just for Sophii, but for Merred as well, and for the nameless raiders she had killed.

And of the love that had burned to ash around her, she felt now a faint whisper.

In time, when her work was done and the piece was at the very least recognisable, she would return it to the mountainside. If someone destroyed it again, she would not have the strength of will to restore it. But maybe they wouldn't. Maybe, just maybe, she would give someone hope.

Khanate started as a sound reverberated through the gloom. Five knocks, deep and resonant, rung from behind the door she'd barricaded years ago. On instinct, she reached for her bow.

Then she threw it aside, and as if entranced, walked to the door. Her metallic reinforcements, though whittled down by the many attempted raids over the years, were still holding strong, dozens of chainlinks sealing the door and defending her Refuge. Now, without even really knowing why, Khanate began to unwind them. She would no longer be a bringer of death.

For the first time since the night Sophii died, the doorway swung open.